Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I cannot accept this amendment because the trend is in the opposite direction. It is standard practice in recent years that at a minimum, the chief executive of an organisation sits on the managing board, in this case on the authority itself. As often as not, several of the senior directors of the organisations also have ex officio seats on the board. That is the model we are proposing here. It is important we bring the senior decision makers onto the board and that the board has the advantage of all the information or communication. We do not want an information or communications gap between the management and the board. It also develops a clear and single viewpoint on key strategic issues which is important for an organisation such as the DTA which has a major strategic role.

The Senator's fear is that there may be a capture by the management of the authority. The effective counterbalance is to ensure there are other good strong directors with a spread of knowledge and expertise available about the business of the organisation so that they are able to maintain an independent view and engage with or challenge the management. Given that both issues are important, cohesion between management and board and countering the concern of a capture by management, it is important there would be very strong directors on the board. This is provided for in the Bill and I am wedded to this model at this stage. I ask the Senator to withdraw the amendment.